PeaceWeavers

Both this issue [of the Center's E-News] and the year 2024 mark the anniversaries of two important events in US history: the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education (1954), and the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act (1964). These monumental events, with their deep theological and civic-responsibility roots, radically changed American life for the better. This article highlights the p...

Baptist pastors Isaac Backus and John Leland were part of a Christian struggle for religious freedom that began in England and later flourished in North America. By way of background, from time out of memory, kings and queens had demanded total allegiance, based upon the notion of "Divine Right of Kings." This claim said a monarch could not be questioned on any matter, and all people must show abs...

Klaus-Dieter grew up in Wiesbaden, Germany, the fourth child in a Baptist family. His father and mother were committed Christians. Klaus' father was a baker and, from his earliest childhood, Klaus and his siblings learned to work very hard. When he was a young teenager, Klaus read several books by "jungle doctor" Paul White, an Australian doctor who had served as a missionary in Tanganyika, Africa...

In the history of Christian missions, those intending to share the gospel have taken several approaches in doing so. Early on, during the Catholic European expansion period, missionaries were regularly sent out with explorers. They sometimes exploited indigenous peoples as they claimed lands and resources, forced baptisms, and eradicated original cultures and languages. Later, some Colonialists st...

Christians have been responding to disasters since the New Testament times, when house churches sent relief to brothers and sisters living in famine affected regions (e.g., Acts 11:27-30). As Christians, we do not “put our theology on the shelf” when we respond to disasters. Instead, we put our theology to work! Identifying with and assisting individuals and communities affected by disasters, whet...

Two streams of thought have influenced this April column. The first was a Sunday, 9 May 2021, Christian Post article on the top Mothers of Christian history, written by Mainline Church Editor, Michael Gryboski. That set me to thinking about the women I might choose. The second was a recent movie I watched with my daughter and a friend, Unsung Hero*, which affected me deeply.We have highlighted in ...

On 16 December 1867, in the village of Millisle, County Down, Ireland, a tiny babe was born to a young miller and his wife, David and Catherine Carmichael. They named her Amy Beatrice. She was the eldest of seven siblings and helped her parents raise them. She attended grade school in the hamlet and later attended Harrogate Ladies College for four years. She was five-foot tall, brown-eyed, and a b...

Dirk Willems was born in a small village called Asperen, Netherlands, about 1540. He was an Anabaptist, believing in salvation through Jesus Christ and a public declaration of His Lordship through believer's baptism.He believed that the true church was composed of born-again believers, that membership was voluntary, that discipleship was their goal, and that the government had no right to dictate ...

One of the most brilliant sons of the Church is a man almost nobody remembers today, although he belongs indisputably to the whole Christian church.His name is Jan Amos Comenius, a follower of Jan Hus of Bohemia (now Czechoslovakia), the martyr burned at the stake in 1415 for his preaching. Hus taught that God's Word should be read in the language of the people, instead of Latin. He also preached ...

We live in a war-torn world. We are eyewitnesses to war within countries, war within regions, war within communities and families, and war within human hearts. This month, we spotlight a contemporary PeaceWeaver, who has spent his life addressing the causes, preventing, and halting war. For two decades, Greg Boyle has rescued young men and women from the ravages of soul-deep conflict. He is the Fo...

“Surrender yourselves then to be ledand disposed of just as God pleases,with respect both to your outwardand inward state.”* Most historians date the close of the Reformation to the year 1648. Luther in Germany, Zwingli and Calvin in Switzerland, Latimer and Ridley in England, and the Anabaptists in many parts of Europe, all had addressed errors they found in the Catholic tradition. Protests also...

In early America, during the 17th and first half of the 18th century, most children led rather predictable and routine lives. They lived at home in rural homesteads and farms, working with their families in self-sufficient units. They raised gardens and crops and livestock, and made their living from their land. Every child grew up with family chores and responsibilities.Between the Revolution and...

Every once in a while, a whole family will come to the notice of the general public for its distinguished and extraordinary service. The Edwards are such a tribe in the Christian story. We present this group of parents and siblings as fine examples of child-rearing through troublesome circumstances. Timothy and Esther, who were Congregationalists, produced devout followers of Christ through the fi...

The "Harvard Computers," as they were called, were a team of brilliant women who observed, charted, and processed astronomical data at the Harvard Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, between 1877 and 1919. Edward Charles Pickering directed this hand-selected team until his death in 1919, and then Annie Jump Cannon became its director. From the beginning, the women were challenged to make sens...

Just nineteen days after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freed enslaved individuals during the Civil War, a child was born in a small, rugged, logging camp to William and Lerona Sherwin Helms, near Malone, upstate New York, not far from the Canadian and Vermont borders. Remarkably, that tiny son’s life was set upon a trajectory that would help millions of people to be freed f...

Marjory Bankson wrote a compelling history of a small and innovative ministry that began in 1946 in Washington D. C. Engaging its community for almost eighty years, it is still strongly rooted in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and bears fruit in the people He came to redeem. On Sunday, 5 October 1946, Gordon and Mary Cosby met with seven others to begin Church of the Savior (CoS) as "a local expressi...

The Christmas baby, given the grown-up name of Clarissa (Clara) Harlowe Barton, was born December 25, 1821, in North Oxford, Massachusetts, more than two hundred years ago. Her father was Captain Stephen Barton, an Indian Wars veteran, leader of his town, and owner of a farm. Her father inspired in his daughter both a strong patriotism and a broad interest in helping others. Her mother, Sarah Ston...

Wilfred Thomason Grenfell was born on February 1865, at Parkgate, Cheshire, England to his parents - Algernon Sydney Grenfell, an educator and hospital chaplain, and Jane (Hutchinson) Grenfell. Grenfell grew up in the English countryside, swimming and fishing in the River Dee and hunting local birds along the river's banks.At fourteen, Wilfred attended the Marlborough College in Wiltshire, a board...

Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was born in Belfast, in Ulster, Ireland, the second son of Albert James and Florence Augusta Hamilton Lewis. His mother was the daughter and great-granddaughter of priests, and his elder brother Warren, or Warnie, was his best chum. As a babe, he was baptized by his mother's father in St. Mark's Church, Dundela. He named himself when he was...

Early Church Father Ambrose reports that Easter in 387 was observed in Gaul (France) on 21 March, in Italy on 18 April, and in Alexandria, Egypt, on 25 April. From the 4th century onward, factions of the Church debated the proper dating of Easter. It took a great deal of diplomacy to handle these matters. Hilda of Whitby, a princess and Abbess of a famous monastery, negotiated this very question i...